


The Pull Apart

by agatestones



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Community: hc_bingo, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-30
Updated: 2012-12-30
Packaged: 2017-11-22 23:25:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,390
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/615561
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/agatestones/pseuds/agatestones
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>His eyes are closed. He hasn't bothered to pull a coverlet over him, and his boots are still on. So even in bad shape, at least he's ready. John likes to think he hasn't raised any fools.</p>
<p>Set in the middle of 1.21, Salvation.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Pull Apart

Maybe it was a mistake, to show the boys his research. A mistake to bring them to Iowa, a mistake to let them in on any of it. He thinks sometimes -- pretty often -- that it was a mistake to bring them along 20 years ago. He should have abadoned them and left them safely out of it. John Winchester thinks that kind of thing pretty often.

He gets back to the motel room in Salvation to discover Sam's already there, sacked out on one of the beds. It's been years. John had forgotten how tall he's been getting: his feet hang off the end of the mattress. The lights are off in the room and all the window shades pulled.

"What'd you find," John grunts, but Sam doesn't answer. He puts a hand up to cover his eyes with a dull groan.

The boys _better_ damn well not be drinking in the car. Hungover in the middle of the afternoon is no state for a hunter, even a hunter young enough he thinks he can handle it. John shakes his head and shuts the door behind him.

"All right," he says, low. "What's your brother got you into."

Sam curls in those big shoulders of his with a whimper. "Migraine," he says. His eyes are closed. He hasn't bothered to pull a coverlet over him, and his boots are still on. So even in bad shape, at least he's ready. John likes to think he hasn't raised any fools.

"Hm. This a recent thing?"

"Yessir," whispers Sam. His messy dark hair all over his forehead, almost long enough to cover his eyes. John stands over him and recognizes his own features in the boy's face. Boy, hell: he's 22. He's a man. It's terrifying.

John turns away and paces toward the kitchenette. Dean left the first-aid kit on the countertop, like always. "You taken painkillers already?" he asks. 

But either Sammy's already thrown up, or he's figured out he's not going to be able to keep anything down. All he does is grunt in response. 

Would be good if Dean were here. He's always known what to do about his brother, moreso than John. He's got that touch, like his mother. People trust him. He's the one who could have got out, if only John had realized soon enough. Too late now for that: he won't leave while Sam's still in it, and Sam is in it up to his neck. John has come to realize that the saving of his sons' lives will be the ending of his own. That's as it should be. He's ready, even if they're not.

Sam will never understand that. He shifts on the bed, kicking a little, before he lifts himself up on one elbow. "Where's Dean?" he asks in a faint voice.

"Your brother'll be here soon," says John. He grabs a chair to drag it over and remembers in time about how noise bothered the boy. He picks the chair up instead and sets it down near the bed, close enough to reach. "Head any better?"

Sam sits upright, slouching, fingertips pressed to his forehead. His hair is sweaty, as if he's a little child and has been woken from a dream. John takes his time sitting down in the chair, and reaches out slow so Sam can see him coming.

"Give here," he mutters. Quietly, quietly. His hand rests heavy on Sammy's skull and curls back around the nape. Sam gives a little sigh as John tickles his fingers through that long hair and feels the tension in the boy's neck. John can feel the roughness of his fingertips as he presses into the knots in Sam's shoulder. 

"I feel like my head is splitting in two," Sam says, ghostly. 

John is not the kind to tolerate self-pity, but he lets it slide this time. He can feel the boy's pulse in his neck. "Migraines, huh?"

There's no thing John can say that won't set his son off like a rocket. He can feel the coil of power in that shoulder, the way it's already shifting away from John's grip. It wasn't even a criticism this time, just a question, just the realization that he hasn't seen his boys in so long they've developed whole encyclopedias of problems and he didn't even know about it. There isn't much John can do at this point but let Sam withdraw. He's so fractious he has to get up and walk away, and go find a place to sit at the table.

And they're like that, when Dean gets back. John in one chair and Sam in another, not facing towards each other, Sam still hurting and nothing John can do about it.

"Okay, so, six-month old kids of Salvation, Iowa," says Dean from the doorway. "Oh shit what."

Cool cloudy sky behind him, the room darkened in front of him, Dean comes in and turns on one of the desk lamps rather than the overhead. He shuts the door quietly and shucks off his jacket and without another word he goes over to his brother in the kitchenette. His hand falls on Sam's neck from behind, the same grip John had tried, but Sam will take it from his brother and won't from his own father. "Again?" Dean asks softly.

Sam puts his fingertips to his temples again rather than answer. 

"He get migraines a lot?" says John, as Dean maneuvers around his brother agile as you please. He pours a glass of water and sets it on the table and doesn't even ask about painkillers. The envy is overwhelming and John adds, sourly, "You got any gout you forgot to tell me about while you're at it? Kidney stones?"

And Dean does a strange thing. He walks away from Sam and comes and sits on the bed opposite John and leans forward over his knees. He's calm when he says, "Okay, Sam, lay it on us. What'd you see?"

John Winchester watches one son and listens to the other. Dean is here, on this side of the room, for a reason. His big pale eyes are alert, expectant. He thinks his father will react or interrupt or shoot up out of his seat and gripe at Sam (well, that last is probably true) and Dean has got his hands out and his sympathetic, faithful face ready to soothe things back down to a simmer. John interprets every twitch of those guileless features and listens to the raw experiential immediacy as Sam describes something impossible.

"...And like I said, the glowing yellow eyes and a silhouette. She smashed against the wall and I smelled the fire coming, but, like, not yet. There was time in there. I -- I think we can save her. I _know_ we can save her. It's got to be tonight," he concludes, firm. His color has gotten better and his voice comes out louder and lower in his register. He's still hurting, obviously, but he's past it now. He's thinking about the next thing, and the next thing is walking into a stranger's house and risking his life for someone else's child.

John Winchester's pain is not in his temples. It's in his throat, and his shoulders, and his sore lower back, and all the muscles that are too old for the punishment he puts them through. He closes his eyes rather than let Dean see into them and struggles to think through the hurt: Sam, a waking dream, the demon, the child. Sam's grip on this as an opportunity to replay that night and make it all come out right this time. His optimism is crushing. John breathes hard with it like a man halfway up a mountain, like a man thundering up the stairs after the sound of his wife's screaming.

"The thing is," says Dean, a little shy. He's close, next to John because he knew John was the one who would react badly to all this. Dean says, "They're not migraines. They're visions."

The things Sam doesn't know -- the things even Dean doesn't know. It's too soon. John isn't ready.

He says it sharper than he intends, as if he's angry, but it's not anger in him. Not any more, not ever again. "Visions?" he asks, and Sam opens his mouth to justify it.


End file.
